LECTURE 1 INTRODUCTION TO SOFT SOIL
LECTURE 1
INTRODUCTION TO SOFT SOIL
PROF. Ir. DR. HJ. RAMLI NAZIR
TROPICAL GEOENGINEERING CENTRE,
UNIVERSITI TEKNOLOGI MALAYSIA
INSPIRING CREATIVE AND INNOVATIVE MINDS
Unfortunately, soils are made by nature and not by
man, and the products of nature are always complex.
Karl von Terzaghi, 1936
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LECTURE 1 INTRODUCTION TO SOFT SOIL
• Soils are human in nature. Uncertainties, history,
colours and background dominates the behaviour of the
soil.
• Understanding its behaviour is a complicated task.
Prediction on its behaviour is the best solution offer so
far without any assurance on its performance.
• Terzaghi(1936) once said , “soils are made from natures
and not by man, and the product of natures are always
complex”.
Soil VS human : THE DEFINITION
HARD SOIL
INTERMEDIATE
SOIL
SOFT SOIL
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HOW DO YOU MEASURE AN ELEPHANT?
A QUESTION REGARDING THE
POLITICS OF NUMBER
IF YOU CAN’T MEASURE THEN
YOU CAN’T MANAGE 5
Gue et. al (2006) 6
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GEOTECHNIC IS ALL ABOUT STRESS
AND STRAIN WITH SOME
UNCERTAINTIES
s and e + x
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THERE IS NO ACCURACY IN
GEOTECHNICAL ENGINEERING. WE
ONLY USE THE TERM -
‘RELIABILITY’
The responsible of an engineer is not to calculate accurately
but more to judge soundly.
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Soft Soil Behaviour
• Behaviour of the soft soil is influence by its parent
materials, deposition process, erosion, redeposition,
consolidation and fluctuation of ground water table.
• Name depend on the process how its developed.
• Peat
• Alluvium
• Marine clay
• Lacustrine
• Highly compressible
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Interpretation Test
• Behaviour and properties can be translated from several standard
test:-
• Filed Test
• Light Dynamic penetrometer
• Bore holes, SPT, collection of UD and D samples.
• FVST
• Piezocone (CPTU)
• Laboratory Test
• UCT
• Triaxial (UU, CIU, CD)
• Consolidation
• Compaction
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Su > 10kPa
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PROBLEM RELATED WITH SOFT SOIL
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WHY CHOOSE to construct on SOFT
SOIL?
Due to lack of suitable area for infrastructure
The behaviour of the soft soil is normally influenced by the source
of the parent materials, depositional processes, erosion,
redeposition, consolidation and fluctuation in ground water level.
The choice of construction method in this formation is not generally
governed by direct costs, but also the long term maintenance costs,
duration of completion and cost benefits.
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• Generaly the alluvial deposit consists of finest clays to very coarse
gravels and boulders.
• Alluvial soils usually show pronounced stratification and
sometimes organic matter, seashell and decayed wood.
• Due to highly compressible properties, excessive settlement is the
main concern of the problem statement.
• Construction over soft ground especially over very soft and soft
marine deposits are interesting engineering challenges to engineers
• The notes will present a brief guideline for selection and design of
the various commonly used techniques for construction of
embankment on soft soil.
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• There are two main geotechnical problems in soft clay
engineering, namely settlement and stability.
• However, many practicing engineers tend to forget about
the importance of settlement problem.
• Therefore, more effort should be emphasized in the
interpretation of compressibility parameters for settlement
analysis.
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Problem related to construction on soft soil
• Access problems
• Excessive Settlement
• Embankment Stability
• Bearing Stability
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Infrastructure serviceability failure in highly
compressible area
Courtesy from Forensic Unit CKG
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Septic Tank
Courtesy from Forensic Unit CKG
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How To Solve The Problems
• Treat geotechnical engineering as a ladies wear. Short and impressive but
long enough to cover the essential.
Geoffrey Meyerhof (2002)
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DESIGN ANALYSES
• Which one to use???
• TOTAL STRESS ANALYSIS
Or
• EFFECTIVE STRESS ANALYSIS
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TOTAL STRESS ANALYSES
• This type of analysis uses the undrained shear strength
of the cohesive soil and also known as short term
analysis.
• The undrained shear strength, cu can be obtained from
field such as vane shear and laboratory such as
unconfined compression test. If the undrained shear
strength is constant throughout the depth then cu = c
and f=0o. The use of unconsolidated undrained triaxial
compression test is also applicable provided that it is
saturated plastic soil.
• The groundwater does not have an effect in the use of
total stress parameters. 59
EFFECTIVE STRESS ANALYSIS
• This type of analysis uses the drained shear strength, c’ and
f’ of the plastic soil.
• The drained shear strength could be obtained from triaxial
compression test with pore pressure measurement tested
on a fully saturated specimen of the plastic soil.
• Also known as long term analysis since the shear-induced
pore water pressure (positive or negative) from the loading
has dissipated and the hydrostatic pore pressure conditions
now prevail in the field.
• Thus the location of the water table is significant in
considering in the analysis.
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Governing Conditions (TSA and ESA)
• Total stress analysis will provide a lower allowable bearing
capacity for soft or very soft saturated plastic soils.
• This is due to the load from foundation that will
consolidate the plastic soil leading to an increase in shear
strength as time passes.
• For Effective stress analysis, the shear strength is higher for
soft or very soft saturated plastic soils which will results in
higher bearing capacity.
• Effective stress analysis will provide lower bearing capacity
for very stiff or hard saturated plastic soils.
• This is due to the dilation of plastic soil during undrained
shear deformation since the soil are usually heavily
overconsolidated.
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• As the soil dilates it tends to develop negative pore pressure. As these
pressure dissipates with times the shear strength of the heavily
overconsolidated plastic soil will decrease. This will lower the bearing
capacity of the soil.
• Firm to stiff saturated plastic soils are intermediate conditions.
• The OCR and the tendency of the saturated plastics soil to consolidate
will determine whether the TSA or ESA provides the lower bearing
capacity.
• Geotechnical works in deep deposit of highly compressible soft clay is
often associated with problems such as excessive differential
settlement, negative skin friction and bearing capacity failure
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Important Parameter
• Compression index, Cc is the slope of the linear portion of
the e – log s plot and is dimensionless.
• Many attempts also have been carried out to correlate Cc
with the basic index properties of soil, especially with the
liquid limit, LL.
• Cc is influenced by the sensitivity of natural clays, it can
generally be related to void ratio and sensitivity.
• The recompression index, Cr is also an important
parameter for soft compressible ground settlement analysis.
• Cr is defined in the same way as Cc except that it applies to
the unloading-reloading phase of the oedometer test.
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• Undrained shear strength is a soil parameter essential for
the analysis of embankment stability (total stress) and
bearing capacity of foundation in saturated clay.
• Shear strength of soil can be measured directly or indirectly
with different apparatus, including laboratory and in-situ
tests.
• The results of laboratory tests are usually subjected to
uncertainties primarily due to the inevitable sample
disturbance particularly for very soft to soft clay.
• Normalized undrained shear strength with the
preconsolidation pressure, Pc is an important index to
evaluate the undrained shear strength of saturated clay.
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• In ground settlement analysis, one of the important parameters for
geotechnical design over soft clay is overconsolidation ratio (OCR).
• Underestimating OCR will cause overestimation of consolidation
settlement magnitude and thus lead to expensive and time-consuming
geotechnical solutions.
• Hence, it is extremely useful if reliable correlations on OCR can be
obtained from piezocone data.
• Many attempts have been carried out to estimate OCR from piezocone
data.
• OCR of soft marine clay can be estimated with the following simple
formula:
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• Many geotechnical options are available for engineers’
consideration.
• Of course, the one that uses the local materials and
resources that are cheaper and easier to construct would
no doubt be the choice.
PERCIEVE PROBLEMS
ACTUAL PROBLEMS
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PROBLEMS WITH CONSTRUCTION
ON SOFT SOIL IN MALAYSIA
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SUCCESS IS ABOUT PLANNING
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Geotechnical forensic cases carried out by PWD
(Mohamad Nor Omar et.al (2016)
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Preventive Measures
• Proper design and review
• Stability check of embankment & abutment
• Most critical :-
• Anticipation and planning
• During construction (must check temporary works)
• Proper full-time supervision (with relevant experience & understand design
assumptions)
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• Failures (temporary works)
• Inadequate geotechnical design
• Subsoil Condition (Lack of understanding)
• Lack of construction control & supervision (due to inexperience or
ignorance)
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THE ARTS OF ANTICIPATION 79
Begin with end
in mind!
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Begin with end
in mind! 81
Begin with end
in mind! 82
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• A whole-of-life approach should be considered to derive best value for
money.
• It takes into account satisfactory performance requirements without
excessive capital expenditure.
• It also ensures that the regime of long-term maintenance and cost will be
within acceptable limits throughout the design life of the infrastructure.
• By balancing capital cost and long-term maintenance cost, a whole-of-life
approach generally provides the best value for money solution.
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Lessons learn from SOFT SOIL
PROBLEMS
• Ground Variability which leads to uncertainties.
• Engineering judgment as an acceptable engineering practice.
• Instrumentations is a useful tool to supplement what we cannot identify at
early design stage.
• Every instrument shall be placed at the site to answer specific question. If
no question, then no instrument
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• Instrumentation results to justify any shortcomings or negligence in the
design of the project designer and also those by the work contractor
• Be aware that instruments only provide point measurement with
dependence on localized characteristics. It may not represent the whole
problem unless large number of point measurement instruments are
installed
• Good conformance of instrument and installation procedures are necessary
for measurement of good reliability.
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• If you can not get high quality and reliable data, then better don’t initiate
any instrumentation scheme because it will create more problems than
being advantageous
• Bearing capacity and settlement assessment by CRUDE check at initial
stage need to be done to view the severity of the problems.
• SYSTEMATIC check & review process need to be done by engineering
expert in soft ground.
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• Beware of any changes of properties related to parameters to be measured
due to presence of instruments.
• Exact interpretation of soil parameters in any remedial works in soft soil
shall be fully understood.
• Cost incurred during constructions is inevitable but can be minimized with
proper planning.
• Typical geotechnical reports taken as Geotechnical memoranda to defined
uncertainties shall be included as a contract document, when used together,
help to avoid claims or provide efficient resolution.
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CONCLUSIONS
• Uncertainties in soft ground cause a big challenge for engineers to design.
• Uncertainties that reasonably exist are lightning rods for contractual claims
because they are interpreted as sources of ambiguity under the contract
• Geotechnical expert (Not experience engineer) shall be call upon to resolve
the issues related to Geotechnical initially before construction started.
Normally at design stage.
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• Improvement method shall be closely monitored with full-time
SUPERVISION with team of suitable experience on site.
• Designers need to layout their planning and scheduling prior to the
construction on soft ground including possible cause of modes of failure
(arts of anticipation)
• Observational Method through instrumentation is recommended.
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• Extra Care on TEMPORARY WORKS when needed especially for
excavation. This need to be anticipate as it will increase the construction
cost.
• Understand the Limitation of Software used . It may not check all the
required modes of failures. It is a tools to expedite design process.
• STRUCTURED training programmes (enhance technical knowledge &
share lessons learned)
• Group discussions
• Colloquium
• Classes
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• DO NOT
• Abuse geotechnical design, detailed analysis
• Overlook localised weak zones
• Overlook structural detailing
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• Engineering is not about calculating or obtaining results accurately but it
is more on the reliability and judgement.
• Finally our judgement and feels will dictate the final results of the design.
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We Have an Abundance of Data but a
Lack of Knowledge
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Those who fail to learn from
the past are doomed to
repeat it.
George Santayana (1863 Spain –1952
Italy)
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END LECTURE 1
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